Oklahoma State Penitentiary

Prison in McAlester, Oklahoma, U. S

The Oklahoma State Penitentiary, nicknamed "Big Mac", is a prison of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections located in McAlester, Oklahoma, on Opened in 1908 with 50 inmates in makeshift facilities, today the prison holds more than 750 male offenders,

Upon her return to Oklahoma, Barnard recommended that all Oklahoma inmates be removed from the Lansing facility and returned to the state. Governor of Oklahoma Charles N. Haskell supported Barnard's proposal, and within two months of Barnard's visit to Kansas, on October 14, 1908, two groups of 50 offenders each were sent by train to McAlester. The F Cellhouse was added in 1935, and later the New Cellhouse was constructed. A shoe manufacturing plant and a tailor shop were part of the prison's inmate industry program, designed to provide work for offenders; at Lansing, prisoners were forced to work in the local mines, a practice Barnard banned. The Warden's House, across the street from the prison, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Female prisoners were sent to Kansas in territorial days also. The first females brought back from Kansas stayed in a ward near the East Gate, built in 1911, on the fourth floor of the West Cellhouse. The female population had grown to 26 by the time a separate building about 1 mile (2 km) west of the main institution was completed in 1926. The first prison escape (from behind the walls) occurred on January 19, 1914. Three inmates stole a gun and killed three prison employees and retired federal judge John Robert Thomas during the escape attempt. The convicts were later killed behind a rock ledge located on a ridge overlooking a wagon road.

By the early 1970s, advocacy groups warned the state government that the situation was becoming dire. A federal court in 1978 found conditions at OSP unconstitutional. The lawsuit, filed by one inmate before the riot, was changed to a class action suit after the riot. U. S. District Judge Luther Bohannon put the Department of Correction under federal control. The last issue of the lawsuit, medical care for offenders, was settled 27 years later, in 2001. The Talawanda Heights Minimum Security Unit was opened outside the East Gate Area in October 1989 to house inmates who hold support jobs inside the facility. In 1992, a special care unit opened to provide mental health care to offenders, reducing the need for psychiatric hospitalization outside the prison. A medium security unit with a capacity of 140 inmates is located on G and I units to help prisoners adjust to a lower security classification. Another addition to the prison, H Unit, houses inmates under both administrative and disciplinary segregation. H Unit is also the site of Oklahoma's death row and the state's lethal injection death chamber. In March 2015, Gov. Mary Fallin signed into law HB1879 providing for nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to the primary execution method of lethal injection. In March 2018, Attorney General Michael J. Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced that Oklahoma would start using inert gas asphyxiation as the primary method of execution. Oklahoma Department of Corrections has had difficulty obtaining the drugs used to perform lethal injections.

Starting in 1940, except for a handful of years during World War II and during the 1970s inmate uprising, OSP held a prison rodeo until 2009. A two day event was held in August, (accounts differ), the rodeo was a joint venture between the city of McAlester and the state Department of Corrections. The McAlester Chamber of Commerce contracted with the city to coordinate and market the event, which was last held in 2009 due to a state budget shortfall starting in 2010. As of 2021, the rodeo had still not returned, despite support from the warden and Governor Kevin Stitt. The biggest barrier remained the cost of restoring the arena.

C. L. Harkins – Wealthy veterinary surgeon, convicted of rape. Acquitted of three counts of murder. Charles Coleman (Executed on September 10, 1990) – Convicted murderer who was the first person to be executed in Oklahoma since 1966. Thomas J. Grasso (Executed on March 20, 1995) – Convicted murderer who was executed for strangling an 87 year old woman. Roger Dale Stafford (Executed on July 1, 1995) – Convicted serial killer sentenced to death on Oct. 17, 1979, and spent over 15 years on death row for the 1978 Lorenz Sirloin Stockade murders. Clayton Lockett (Executed on April 29, 2014) – Convicted of a 1999 murder, rape and kidnapping. Lockett's execution made headlines for the series of events that took place during his execution, resulting in the Governor ordering a review of the execution process. John Marion Grant (Executed on October 28, 2021) – Convicted of a 1998 murder. His execution was the first in over six years and generated controversy. Nannie Doss – Female serial killer who died of Leukemia while incarcerated in the Penitentiary. Karl Myers murderer and suspected serial killer who was given two death sentences for the sexually motivated murders of two women killed in 1993 and 1996. Died on December 28, 2012, from natural causes.